Star Light, Star Bright

This blog is mostly for fictional stories, but this story is not fiction. 

I love a night sky. Especially ones that can be viewed away from the light pollution of big cities. Often at our summer cabin we will gaze at a bejewelled universe. Occasionally we will see a shooting star, sometimes a passing satellite.

Last year in Cuba, while sitting in our garden after supper, I chanced to see a spectacle I had never seen before. I did not know what I had witnessed at first. It was, I gathered on reflexion, a large comet exploding as it entered earth’s atmosphere. This was no ordinary star. It appeared like a bright inverted comma in the sky for but an instant – a flash. It was large. Much larger than what appears to be the size of the average star – indeed to the eye it appeared to be about one quarter the size of a full moon in the night sky. That was, no doubt, a once in a lifetime experience.

But this past February, while sitting again in our Cuba garden after supper, I chanced to look up at the night sky. I saw a satellite passing above me from southwest to northwest. Now occasionally one does see one or two satellites in an evening. This particular evening, the satellite was followed in the same orbit by a second, then a third, a fourth and my partner and I counted in all 29 satellites passing in quick succession and following the same orbit like target rubber ducks at one of the booths at a fall fair. This was amazing, and I was thankful that I was not alone in seeing this extraordinary event. Then oddly, eight more satellites passed in quick succession, not in the same orbit, but randomly.

For the next six weeks I would occasionally look at the night sky from our garden. Rarely did I see even one satellite. Once I saw two. Most evenings I saw none. Now, I could be a conspiracy theorist. I am not. But I do not understand how this satellite parade could happen randomly. Probably I never will.